JOURNEY TO THE INTERIOR.

The poem Journey To The Interior is written by Margaret Atwood. This poem was written in 1960s. This poem belongs to the Confessional School of poets. These poets believed that as a result of the post world war genocide, atom bombs and concentration camps, human psyche has been damaged to a large extent, leaving the poets with the responsibility to explore their own recesses of darkness. Margaret Atwood was deeply influenced by this urge to embark upon such an inner and imaginative journey. The poem Journey To The Interior portrays Atwoods attitude on inner journey to discover oneself. She presents a metaphorical journey to explain a journey into the mind. She examines human behaviors reasons, understanding one selfs mystery, lack of knowledge of individuals about themselves. Atwood has composed a metaphysical journey contrasting the similarities and differences. Her fascination with the bizarre fluidity of identity and its mystery is the focus of thy poem. The first paragraph establishes the similarities between physical and metaphysical journey. The usage of the personal pronoun I in this introductory paragraph establishes the personal experience of the poet as it is her who undertakes the physical journey in the poems case an awful; bush walk. The poem starts off with a factual matter of fact in bush. The pairing knife and white mushrooms suggest the distraction that little experiences can cause and sidetrack the undertaker from their journey to the interior. The usage of parenthesis with the rhetorical questions (have I been walking in circles again?) reflects the composers and the getting lost easily in this metaphorical journey. The usage of the word danger and many and the phrase but only some have returned safely signifies the composers belief that everyone has been on this journey but some have never returned implying that the psychological state of some people becomes deficient and their normalcy is diminished as they go berserk on this interior.